Were the days of creation 24 hours long?

Were they really 6 literal days?

THE FIRST CHAPTER OF THE BIBLE SAYS GOD CREATED
THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH (AND ALL THAT IS IN THEM) IN
SIX DAYS.

Some people have suggested that the “days” of
Creation Week were probably long periods of time, maybe
millions or billions of years. The reasoning behind this
is usually to harmonize the six days of creation in the
Book of Genesis with the theory of evolution.

But the Bible has its own amazing way of showing that the
“long ages” idea is wrong. We believe the
days were real, ordinary, literal days of around 24 hours
each. Not billions, millions, or even thousands of years.

Here is why:

Reasons why the days were 24 hours

Whenever the word day in the Bible is
limited by a number (such as the first day, the
third day, the sixth day) it
always means a 24-hour day. (For example,
“he rose again the third day according to the
scriptures” — 1 Corinthians 15:4.)

Whenever the word day is used with the
phrase “evening and morning,” it always means
an ordinary night-day cycle. (But see special note below
on Psalm 90:6.)

Genesis 1:14 says God created the lights to divide
day from night, and to be for signs, for seasons, for
days, and for years. If the days are indefinitely long
ages, then what are the years?

If a day is an age, then what is a night? The concept
becomes ludicrous when you try to stretch the length of a
day.

Among the Ten Commandments that God gave to Israel,
recorded in Exodus 20, God said that His creation in six
days, followed by a day of rest, was to be the pattern
for the Israelites' working week: six days of labor
followed by a day of rest. “Six days shalt thou
labour, and do all thy work …,” God said,
“For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth,
the sea, and all that in them is.”
This would not make sense if the Israelites had to work
for six million years followed by a million years of
rest.

Note: Some critics have said that Psalm
90:6 is an example of morning and evening being used in a
general sense, and that this means Genesis days are not
literal 24-hour days.

In the morning it [the grass] flourishes, and grows up;
in the evening it is cut down, and withers.

Critics say this refers to the life cycle of grass,
growing up in the morning and dying weeks or months
later, not the same day.

But note that this reference is nothing like Genesis 1,
which says, “And the evening and the morning were
the first day.” The word day is not even
used in Psalm 90:6, and neither is the phrase
“evening and morning”, or first, second,
third, etc. So it is either naive or deceptive to imply
that this is an exception to the rule.

If God and the Bible writers had wanted to tell us that
the six days were something other than six literal days,
there are many other words they could have used.

Days that are long

There are instances of the word day being used
in a longer sense than 24 hours. Just as we might say,
“The Flood happened in Noah's day”,
meaning in Noah's lifetime, so some versions
of the Bible refer to “the day of the Lord”
and other phrases meaning a longer period of time than 24
hours.

But none of these other instances have the specifiers
that Genesis 1 has in “And the evening and the
morning were the first day”, (e.g. first, second,
third, fourth, etc., or “evening and
morning”).

Sometimes opponents of 24-hour creation days bring up the
verse in Hebrews 4 that says “And God rested on the
seventh day from all His works”, noting that the
seventh day isn't mentioned as finishing, therefore
it could be thousands of years long. This is often used
by Jehovah's Witnesses.

But note that it says God rested on the
seventh day, notGod is
resting. The creative acts of the six days had
finished, so we are simply told that God rested from that
work.

Does a day equal a thousand years?

Some people think that a day may mean a thousand years,
because the Apostle Peter said that “one day is
with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years
as one day” (2 Peter 3:8).

But Peter did not say a day is a
thousand years. He said it is as a
thousand years. He is saying that God is not bound by
time; that a thousand years are no more significant than
a day in God's eternal scheme of things.

A similar thought appears in Psalm 90:4 —
“For a thousand years in thy sight are but as
yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the
night.”

People who say Peter meant that a day is
a thousand years are ignoring the second part of
Peter's statement, which says a thousand years are as
one day. How could we count how many days are in a
thousand years if a day means a thousand years? It
becomes silly when you try to force a meaning that
wasn't intended.

Not an indefinite period either

The passage about a day being as a thousand years has
also been said to mean that a day is simply a long period
of time. But that makes nonsense of Peter's
statement. It would mean that Peter was saying that
“a long period of time is a thousand years.”
See how ridiculous things get when you stray from the
straight meaning of Scripture?

Eroding the Gospel

An important point that Christians need to remember is
that if the days of creation were long ages, then there
are inconsistencies with the Gospel that don't exist
if the days were literal, 24-hour days.

For instance:

Adam, the first man, was created on Day 6.

If there had been millions or billions of years
before Day 6 it would seem to accommodate the billions of
fossils found in the ground. But …

this would mean there had been death and suffering
before Adam's sin, because fossils are the remains of
dead things. Yet we are told in the New Testament that
“by one man sin entered into the world, and
death by sin” (Romans 5:12).

Therefore, the doctrines of sin and death that
Christians adhere to have no basis in the “long
day” theory.

Rather than believing the evolutionists' idea that
fossils took long ages to form, it is wiser for
Christians to question whether fossils really need
millions of years to form. They don't!

From all this, we believe the clear meaning of the days
of creation in the Bible is the obvious one: They were
literal, ordinary, 24-hour days. Nothing more and nothing
less.